Tuesday 3 April 2018


RITES OF PASSAGE

by Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard


Positions call out to us as if there were
ladders in our daily lives, and to reach
the upper rungs often means

listening to a person in order to use
her thoughts, but the thoughts keep rising
in that person like a spring

in the midst of a meadow. This is one
of the constant stories of our lives,
either to become prominent

and celebrated, or to turn away
from ladders to see roses
blooming on fences, how miniature

wild flowers rise from the cracks
of an asphalt road, to listen to the water
cascading over centuries

of serrated rocks that place us
in the center of creation, a monarch butterfly
alighting on a blade of grass,

for in the vast expanse
of the universe, enmity pales
and we are all just blades of grass.


* * * * *

Marguerite Guzmán  Bouvard is the author of 9 poetry books two of which have won awards, as well as a number of non-fiction books on women and human rights, (Revolutionizing Motherhood; the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) human rights, social justice, illness and grief. She is a former professor of Political Science and Poetry, and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Studies Program Brandeis U. 

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